The timeframe is significant because in India, the death of a woman during the first seven years of matrimony is governed by a specific section of law originally designed to protect women from dowry-related deaths.

The law, first introduced in 1986, stipulates that the suspected suicide or the suspicious death of a woman who has been married less than seven years must be subject to an inquest by a magistrate. Similarly, with cases in which the family of the woman requests such an inquest, or if a police officer has any reason to think it necessary, an inquiry must take place.

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Five decades since dowry was criminalized, it remains a common practice in India. Under the 1961 Dowry Prohibition Act, any person who demands a dowry faces a fine and at least five years in prison. However, in many cases, the size of the dowry is often negotiated before the two families agree on marriage. Many women in India are killed or take their own lives every year over their family’s failure to pay a promised dowry, or unwillingness to succumb to demands from the husband’s family after marriage to pay more than the agreed-upon dowry.

Over 8,600 cases of dowry deaths were registered in India in 2011, up from 8,391 the year before and just over 6,000 in 2002, according to the latest figures from the National Crime Records Bureau.

The laws, included in the Indian Penal Code, the Code of Criminal Procedure and the Indian Evidence Act, governing the first seven years of marriage enable the police to investigate forms of harassment or mental trauma in the absence of evidence of demands for dowry that could lead a married woman to kill herself, said Satish Maneshinde, a Mumbai-based criminal lawyer.

There is no specific rationale behind the choice of seven years as the window within which such inquests are automatically carried out, but the first few years of marriage were regarded as the most tumultuous for women living with in-laws and often the period during which demands for extra dowry were the most persistent, said Indira Jaising, India’s senior-most female federal lawyer.

It was a rise in the number of dowry deaths, “cases of cruelty by the husband and relatives of the husband which culminate in suicide by, or murder of” the woman concerned, according to the 1983 Criminal Law (Second Amendment) Act, which led the Indian government to introduce the seven-year rule.

In a 1983 case before the Supreme Court, Bhagwant Singh challenged the Commissioner of Police in Delhi over the investigation into his daughter’s death. The court found that the police investigation was “desultory and lackadaisical” and officers had not tried hard enough to probe the cause of death. This was one of the judgments that probably provided the basis for the 1986 amendments, said Anish Dayal, a Delhi-based lawyer.

According to the court judgment, Mr. Singh’s daughter, 22-year-old Gurinder Kaur, was found dead on the bathroom floor with third degree burns in her husband’s home on Aug. 9, 1980, ten months after her marriage. Ms. Kaur was under constant pressure from her husband’s family for money and jewelry as dowry gifts, the court said.

The judges ruled that in such cases, which could be linked to a demand for dowry, the perpetrators of the crime often escape because the police investigation is not carried out promptly.

The judgment further states that after the police officer completes his investigation he must submit a report to a magistrate, who is in turn required to probe the case further.

Indian law also states that the police must report any wounds or burns on the woman’s body. It adds that where “it is shown that soon before her death she was subjected to cruelty or harassment by her husband or any relative of her husband for, or in connection with, any demand for dowry, such death shall be called ‘dowry death,’ and such husband or relative shall be deemed to have caused her death.”

Demands for dowry allegedly drove a Delhi police woman, Preeti Dhaka, who probed dowry cases herself, to take her own life in 2013. Police have charged her husband, his mother and sister for harassing Ms. Dhaka into killing herself and inflicting cruelty on her. The suspects in the case are awaiting trial and have denied wrongdoing.

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